Saudi Arabia's Energy Minister, Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, said the volume of oil shipped through the kingdom's key East-West pipeline has reached a capacity of 5.8 million barrels per day (bpd). He spoke during a panel session at the GCC Forum 2026 in the Bahraini capital, Manama, on Tuesday.
"Not everyone knows that within five or six days, we began using the pipeline again after the major attack on it," he said, according to Saudi media, referring to drone strikes that Riyadh blamed on Iraqi militia forces last month. "And, thank God, as of this morning we are back to 5.8 million barrels," Prince Abdulaziz added.
The 1,200-kilometer (750-mile) pipeline links the major oil fields in eastern Saudi Arabia with the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea, allowing the kingdom to bypass the Strait of Hormuz — the shipping route that has been largely closed since the US-Israeli war against Iran erupted in late February.
Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said earlier, at the time of the attack in early September, that the pipeline had been temporarily shut down as a "precautionary" measure. According to the ministry, specialized teams had begun steps to "protect the pipeline and assess its safety."
The East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline, was built in 1981 and has a maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day. Actual flows, however, had been lower in recent months — around 2 million barrels per day in August, according to commodities data and analytics firm Kpler — the lowest monthly level since January, when attacks by Yemen's Houthi group made the Red Sea route difficult to use.
Since the US-Israeli war against Iran disrupted oil flows from Saudi Arabia and its Gulf neighbors through the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has used the pipeline to reroute about 4 million barrels per day, roughly 4% of global supply, to Yanbu.
